Category Archives: Google

Post navigation

As group work begins, one of the first things to happen is the dividing up of what needs to be done. It is great to have a central list that everyone can see. Or, maybe you just want to share a shopping list with your significant other. Either way, Google Keep is for you.

One of our high school staff had a great question today. He has his students submitting their work through Google Drive and he wondered how to create an email filter to automatically move those incoming email notices about the files being shared into a folder so as to not clutter up his Inbox.

Keep in mind that Google calls their folders labels. Here is a great video that walks you through the entire process in just two minutes.

Using Google Apps in your classroom with your students? If not, you should be. There are just way too many tools within the Google Apps environment that can make your life so much more efficient and the students so much more empowered. Take a look at Pear Deck as an example. One of the best parts about using this tool is that both the teacher and student can log into the Pear Deck system using their Google accounts. So, no need to create new ones. Yeah! Another time saver.

As always, let me know if you need help getting rolling with this tool. Always happy to help out.

Kelly Clark has a nice post about apps student use in Chrome and on Chromebooks. Each of these apps will also work on any Mac or Windows device running Chrome, so don’t think they’re only for the Chromebook users. You can find them linked below. Mouse over each and see what you think. Click on the one’s you’d like to read more about and maybe add to Chrome. If you want them on your Chromebooks, shoot me an email with the link to the one(s) you want and I will add them in the Dashboard so they appear automatically when students log in.

For years we have pushed for staff to use Google Drive to store their documents and files because we all know that technology fails eventually, and it happens at the most inopportune times. But the upside is that Google does an excellent job of backing your content up regularly, so it will be there even when your laptop or flash drive might crash on you. It’s rare, but it happens, so why not be on the safe side.

The concern by some was that they think they have to have the Internet to access their content on Drive. That’s not accurate. Rich Kiker does a great job in the video below showing you how to access your Drive content even when you’re without Internet access. I’ve been using this for years, and it works great! If you want help getting it setup, let me know.

Now that you are back in your classroom and spending some time reviewing previous resources for the coming year, you might have noticed there is a new look in Google Drive. Here’s a quick overview from Google on the changes. Hope it helps!

If you’ve been hearing the hype of Google Classroom and impatiently awaiting its release, it’s finally here. Just go to http://classroom.google.com and get started. If you are a Chrome browser user (and you should be), you can also add the Classroom Chrome App. I already added it to the students’ Chromebook logins, so it’ll automatically show up once they log into the Chromebook in any class.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then watch the introductory video below and learn how Google can make organizing your class workload into a much more efficient, paperless system that you and the students will enjoy. Let me know if I can be of any assistance.